Sometime after planting fruit trees, someone with much more experience pointed out that the nasty spiked branches would never produce fruit, because they weren’t part of the fruit-bearing portion of the plant.

Instead, they were suckers growing from the root stock. You can sort of see where the two join, and there’s the sucker below.

The junction is much clearer on our lemon tree.

Lesson is: they are nasty things, obviously well worth removing!

For some reason, the yucca plants are falling apart this year. The first—a few weeks ago—appeared to have been caused by heavy wind. This one, not sure, but even though it was hanging over the driveway, I knew at first glance I had to leave it for a while: the bees were having a field day.

That was almost two weeks ago.

So what’s my excuse now? (Rhetorical question.)

I has always thought that trees have innate intelligence, but one of our two avocado trees is doing its best to prove me wrong. The last time it bore fruit heavily, it had so much weight on this branch that I had to put a board underneath so that it wouldn’t break. And now this.

A little skinny twig forks, one side becoming hugely thicker, then doing a 180 and growing upwards.

Really. Where did this tree go to school?